Two days before the election on “Face the Nation,” CBS’s Bob Schieffer asked viewers to name one item whose costs have gone up as much over time as campaigns. That’s easy. While campaign spending soared to $3.67 billion this year from $1.6 billion in 1998, federal government spending rose 5% faster, to $3.9 trillion from $1.65 trillion.

It is logical that these expenditures have gone up in tandem. The bigger the federal government, the more is at stake, and the harder politicians and special interests fight to see who gets to control it. If the federal government were still the 2% to 3% of GDP that it was a century ago, people likely wouldn’t care as passionately about the outcome of most elections.

In the Journal of Law and Economics (2000), John Lott, one of the authors here, studied gubernatorial and state legislative campaign expenditures from 1976 to 1994. After accounting for such factors as the number of contested races, how close the elections were, and how closely divided control of the legislature was, his research showed that almost 80% of the increase in campaign spending for state offices was explained by changes in the size of state governments. States with the fastest-growing budgets saw the biggest increases in campaign expenditures. . . .

Rising Democratic star and gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis has joined her top Republican rival in supporting a proposed "open carry" law. It would allow people with concealed handgun licenses to wear a pistol on their hip, in full view, while in public. . . .

I am skeptical of the benefits of open carry for reasons that I have detailed before. Still, passage of the law has one benefit, it will presumably stop those people who are openly carrying long guns into public places. Hopefully, open carry advocates will realize that it is best for them to lay low and not create more of a ruckus until the legislation gets passed and then that they will openly carry only handguns, which is what I understand that they have been wanting all along.

So why were the polls so incredibly wrong?: Huge bias in favor of the Democrats

What was supposed to be an easy Democratic victory in Maryland ended up being a Republican landslide win by nine percentage points. In Illinois the Democrat was supposed to win, but the Republican won easily. In Kansas what were supposed to be a couple close races turned into Republican comfortable victories for the Senate and governorship. In Virginia, a race that no one thought would be remotely close turned into a late night nail biter and still isn't quite over. Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky was supposed to be fairly close to Mitch McConnell, but it turned into a 15 percentage point tidal wave against her.

Based on results as reported through early Wednesday morning — I’ll detail our method for calculating this in a moment — the average Senate poll conducted in the final three weeks of this year’s campaign overestimated the Democrat’s performance by 4 percentage points. The average gubernatorial poll was nearly as bad, overestimating the Democrat’s performance by 3.4 points. . . .

Interestingly, this year’s polls were not especially inaccurate. Between gubernatorial and Senate races, the average poll missed the final result by an average of about 5 percentage points — well in line with the recent average. The problem is that almost all of the misses were in the same direction. . . .

To be sure, Republicans were favored to win back the Senate on Tuesday. They led in six of the 10 contested races – and hold the advantage in a seventh, Louisiana, in the runoff next month.

But it wasn’t that Republicans won so many of the most competitive races — it was how much they won by. . . .

Republicans have long claimed that public polls, usually conducted by randomly dialing phone numbers rather than only contacting voters with a history of turning out in midterm elections, include too many people who won’t ultimately cast a ballot – a group that tends to lean Democratic.

Those public surveys, they say, also weight, or peg, their demographic data to known Census parameters, ignoring historical trends of the midterm electorate – which is usually older and more white.

“I think the media polls were dramatically off because too many media pollsters use Census weights,” said Republican consultant Brad Todd, whose firm, OnMessage Inc., conducts polls and creates TV ads for GOP candidates. “In a midterm electorate, using the Census as a reference point would have the same value as using a grocery list as a reference point.” . . . .

11/06/2014

UPDATE: Republicans officially control 30 state legislatures (31 if you include Nebraska), Dems only 11

While Obama doesn't believe that he is responsible for the latest wave election, Republicans are more than happy to give him the credit (though presumably they would have preferred never having the damage done to the country to begin with).

To see how dramatic the change has been note that this change flips state legislatures that weren't flipped after the 2010 wave. The new state legislatures controlled by Republicans are:

Colorado Senate (conceivable that Dems could still hold on after recounts)

Grocery Store Employee with concealed handgun permit shoots and kills armed man who made a disturbance

The man caused a disturbance in the grocery store at 1730 Old State Road M about 10:20 am., said Capt. Ron Arnhart. The man appeared to be intoxicated.

Two employees followed the man to the parking lot in hopes of stalling him until deputies arrived so he wouldn't drive drunk.

The man pulled a handgun from his vehicle and pointed it at them, Arnhart said. One of the employees has a concealed-carry permit and had his own gun. That employee shot the man, who died at the scene, Arnhart said. . . .

11/05/2014

Wave election had impact far down the ballot. Republicans picked up a number of state legislatures

For some perspective, note that this tidal wave comes on top of the 2010 wave. One would have thought that the Republicans had already reached as high as they could after all the offices that they took in 2010. But they actually have one more governorship than after 2010 and more state legislatures.

Republicans have picked up Colorado state Senate (possibly the state House), Maine state Senate, Minnesota state House, New Hampshire state House, New Mexico state House, New York state Senate, West Virginia state House and a tie in the Senate, Obviously not all the results are in yet, but Republicans now control both houses of 28 state legislatures as well as the single house in Nebraska.

Even in Pennsylvania where Republicans lost the governorship (the only one that they lost), Republicans added 8 state house seats(119-84) and 3 senate seats (30-20).

UPDATE: Add in both houses in Nevada and the Washington state Senate. The NCSL has this summary:

Even with a weapon trained on him, the restaurant owner -- who has a valid concealed carry license, police said -- managed to retrieve his own gun and start firing at the robber at the cash register, striking him in the leg and buttocks. The suspect collapsed outside the restaurant trying to flee. . . .